SAN DIEGO & CHALFONT ST. GILES, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cytori Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CYTX - News) and GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE - News), today announce an agreement by which GE Healthcare will commercialize Cytori’s StemSource® technology in the North American stem cell banking and research markets. The StemSource technology includes automated equipment to process stem and regenerative cells found in adipose tissue, cryopreserve them or use them directly for research purposes.

In January 2009, Cytori and GE Healthcare formed a separate agreement to commercialize Cytori’s products in ten European countries. This includes selling the Celution® 800/CRS System in the European cosmetic and reconstructive surgery market as well as selling StemSource products in the European cell banking and research markets.

“Expanding our commercialization partnership into North America will allow us to take advantage of GE Healthcare’s established stem cell banking and research customer-base,” said Christopher J. Calhoun, chief executive officer for Cytori Therapeutics. “Both organizations recognize there is an existing demand in the United States for these products and we look forward to making the StemSource technology available in the U.S. in the first half of 2009.”

The partnership entered into today is similar in nature to the European agreement, but is limited to the sale of StemSource banking and research products in the U.S., Canada and Mexico for 18 months starting in the second quarter of 2009. Today’s agreement does not include U.S. commercialization of Cytori’s Celution System, which is currently under review by the FDA.

“This agreement between GE Healthcare and Cytori is important for our growing life sciences business,” says Konstantin Fiedler, general manager, Cell Technologies at GE Healthcare. "Our U.S. sales team, like that in Europe, is seeing growing customer demand for adipose related cell technology, both from our existing stem cell banking customers as well as our research customers involved in the development of cell therapies. An expanded partnership with Cytori gives our US sales team access to these first-in-class products for these markets in the U.S.”

About Cytori

Cytori develops and globally commercializes regenerative medicine technologies, which provide real-time, point-of-care access to clinical grade regenerative cells. Our technology is incorporated into two product families. The Celution®-related products are sold throughout Europe and Asia primarily into the cosmetic and reconstructive surgery market and are under evaluation by the U.S. FDA. Our StemSource® products are sold globally for cell banking and research applications. We are also developing additional clinical uses of our technology for the treatment of multiple medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease, urinary tract disorders, and wound related conditions. To commercialize our technology, Cytori has partnered with global and regional leaders in healthcare such as Olympus Corp, GE Healthcare, and Green Hospital Supply. www.cytoritx.com

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE - News). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 47,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.